Leandro Lamor |
Barcelona (EFE) socio-economic and ideological.
In a sector that, according to Exceltur, exceeds 12% of GDP, the explosion of urban tourism driven by low-cost flights and the emergence of digital contracting platforms has stressed the sustainability seams of receiving destinations.
After easing the restrictions due to the pandemic, the massive return of tourists has reactivated three key issues: urban, environmental and economic sustainability. Because tourism is no longer just a visitor statistic, but the battering ram of the globalizing impact on cities and communities.
Recently the Cabildo de Lanzarote declared the island “touristically saturated”; Seville, Barcelona or San Sebastián persecute tourist apartments without a license and candidates of all stripes debate whether or not to tax overnight stays.
The macroeconomic picture breathes consensus: Spain is one nanosecond away from exceeding the tourist growth rates of 2019. But pre-pandemic dilemmas are resurrected, especially fueled since the arrival of new parties in politics after the social and ideological disruption of 15-M.
There is no room for nuances: Colau, Collboni or Trias model? Armengol or Prohens? Will Madrid have a tourist tax if the left wins? Will De la Cruz continue Kichi’s crusade against the tourist apartments in Cádiz? Will the ecotax reach the Canary Islands?
And it is that tourism has come down to the political arena in the form of a “double T”: Taxes and tourismophobia, concepts that emerged in destinations such as Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencia and that have spread their stain throughout the Spanish geography.
Rates yes or rates no?
In Spain, only Catalonia and the Balearic Islands have a mandatory rate for tourist overnight stays, in line with European capitals such as Rome or Paris, while Valencia this legislature approved a voluntary rate at the discretion of the municipalities.
However, while in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands the measure has made its way despite the initial reluctance of the sector, in Valencia the hotel management is radically opposed, the PP promises to repeal it if it governs and the socialist president himself, Ximo Puig, believes that his application will be minority.
In the Canary Islands, the progressive government of PSOE, Nueva Canarias, Podemos and Agrupación Socialista Gomera stopped the implementation of an eco-tax due to the COVID stoppage, but Podemos and NC have already made it clear that they will now request its application to agree.
With the electoral campaign, the debate in Madrid has also been reopened, where the tourist tax was already put on the table during the mandate of Manuela Carmena, who advocated applying it in the face of rejection from the right and the hotel sector. The same has happened now with just one comment on the subject of the socialist candidate, Reyes Maroto.
In the antipodes, the Balearic eco-tax today arouses the consensus of practically all the parties and the employers’ association and even the PP has said that it will not repeal it if it governs.
Nobody wants to be Venice
Behind the phenomenon of urban tourism in Spain lies another battle between urban planning and the economic interests of city councils, hoteliers, neighbors and owners of tourist apartments and flats, a sector shaken both by the illegal offer and by the emergence of platforms such as Airbnb.
The Barcelona city council is waging a crusade against illegal tourist apartments, while the Junta de Andalucía is preparing a regulation that will give city councils powers over a sector that is already half of the offer in the community.
Also in the Canary Islands, a historical granary of tourist flats, the Cabildo has applied in this legislature the first sanctions to unlicensed flats with the approval of the hotel sector.
In Donostia, the PNV and PSE council have temporarily suspended the granting of new licenses for hotels and tourist apartments, while in Valencia the PSPV government and Compromís have initiated a process to restrict supply in the historic center.
For tourist homes, the Madrid City Council changed the regulations and their implementation will only be allowed when they are on the ground or first floors of their building and not on top of another home, removing the requirement that they have independent access and the limit of days of use per year from which the license was required.
From the Old Town of Bilbao to the Sevillian neighborhood of Santa Cruz, from the Plaza del Obradoiro to the Mentidero in Cádiz, lies the debate on gentrification; because the wave of tourist apartments, sometimes without a license, triggers the real estate market and expels residents towards the periphery.
Governments and tourist municipalities are looking for solutions and mainly point to flats without a license as the cause of the problem. Because nobody wants to be Venice, the city that, by the way, has just launched an entrance fee.
Tourismophobia: when touching does not make love
All these ingredients have come together in the so-called tourismophobia, a climate whose temperature fluctuates depending on whether you ask a resident of Palma, a retiree from Benidorm or if we launch an impromptu poll on a Madrid terrace at rush hour.
The University of the Balearic Islands defined the concept in 2017 as “a feeling of rejection by the residents of a tourist destination towards people who come to visit it, but not personally against the tourist, but towards mass tourism in general”.
Whether they are activists robbing a tourist bus in Barcelona, actions against “overtourism” in Palma, against the Basque tourism agency or against the “massification” of the Xacobeo, these complaints, sometimes launched by the youth branches of parties, remain in the retina as imaginary of this phenomenon.
“We are not against tourism, but against overcrowding and uncontrolled tourism”, is the mantra that politicians like Ada Colau wield against certain models when asked if Barcelona can support up to 80 cruise ships in a month.
But tourism, like any complex phenomenon, also has its “B-side” if we glimpse another phenomenon.
Recent news: The emptied Spain that asks for a turn before the main tour operators to claim rural tourism.
This is the case of Castilla y León with its commitment to disconnection tourism for new profiles of travelers who demand Wi-Fi in the middle of the countryside; or Cantabria, where tourism does not admit of debate and continues to be that great invention and manna of wealth.